Old Italic scripts

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Old Italic scripts" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Old Italic
An inscription from the Marsiliana tablet, around 700 BC
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	7th century – 1st century BC
Direction	Unicode range	U+10300–U+1032F[1]
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used on the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, including English. The runic alphabets used in Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.^[2]

Origins

The Old Italic alphabets ultimately derive from the Phoenician alphabet, but the general consensus is that the Etruscan alphabet was imported from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoūsai) situated in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its metropolis Chalcis).^[3] The Cumaean hypothesis is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of Veii by the British School at Rome, which found pieces of Greek pottery indicating that contacts between the Etruscan city of Veii and the Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia have existed ever since the second half of the 8th century.^[3] Other scholars posit a different hypothetical Western Greek alphabet that was even older than those attested to have given rise to the Etruscan letters.^[3] Whatever the case, the Etruscans added the c, the q and the combination of vh or hv (for /f/) in order to spell sounds that did not exist in Ancient Greek.^[4] The development and usage of their own Greek-derived alphabet arguably marked the end of the Villanovan culture and ushered in the Etruscan Orientalising period.^[4]: 19

As the Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, it is widely accepted that they spread their alphabet across the peninsula, and the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs.

The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed^[by whom?] to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in the same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations [←] and [→] indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively.

Warning: For the languages marked [?] the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser's Unicode font shows for the corresponding code points in the Old Italic Unicode block. The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use a Unicode font specific to that language.

Phoenician
Letter [←]
Value	ʾ	b	g	d	h	w	z	ḥ	ṭ	y	k	l	m	n	s	ʿ	p	ṣ	q	r	š	t
Western Greek[6][7]
Letter [→]
Value	a	b	g	d	e	w	zd	h	tʰ	i	k	l	m	n		o	p	s	k	r	s	t	u	ks	pʰ	kʰ
Transcription	Α	Β	Γ	Δ	Ε	Ϝ	Ζ	Η	Θ	Ι	Κ	Λ	Μ	Ν	Ξ	Ο	Π	Ϻ	Ϙ	Ρ	Σ	Τ	Υ	X	Φ	Ψ
Etruscan – from 7th century BC[8][9]
Marsiliana [←]
Archaic (to 5th c.) [←]
Neo (4th to 1st c.)[←]
Value	a		k		e	v	ts	h	th	i	k	l	m	n			p	ʃ	k	r	s	t	u	s	ph	kh	f
Transcription	a		c		e	v	z	h	θ	i	k	l	m	n			p	ś	q	r	s	t	u	ṡ	φ	χ	f
Oscan – from 5th century BC[10]
Letter [←]
Value	a	b	g	d	ɛ	v	ts	x?		i	k	l	m	n			p			r	s	t	o:				f	o	e
Transcription	A	B	G	D	E	V	Z	H		I	K	L	M	N			P			R	S	T	U				F	Ú	Í
Lepontic – 7th to 5th century BC
Letter [?][→]	𐌀				𐌄	𐌅	𐌆		𐌈	𐌉	𐌊	𐌋	𐌌	𐌍		𐌏	𐌐	𐌑		𐌓	𐌔	𐌕	𐌖	𐌗
Value
Transcription	A				E	V	Z		Θ	I	K	L	M	N		O	P	Ś		R	S	T	U	X
South Picene – from 6th century BC
Letter [?][→]	𐌀	𐌁	𐌂	𐌃	𐌄	𐌅		𐌇		𐌉	𐌊	𐌋	𐌌	𐌍		𐌏	𐌐		𐌒	𐌓	𐌔	𐌕	𐌖				𐌚	𐌞	𐌝	𐌟
Value
Transcription	A	B	G	D	E	V		H		I	K	L	M	N		O	P		Q	R	S	T	U				F	Ú	Í	*

Missing from the above table:

• Venetic
• Faliscan
• Umbrian
• North Picene
• Rhaetic
  (Raetic)
• Camunic

Etruscan alphabet

Various

The

Rhaetic alphabets

Attested in almost 400 inscriptions from mainly the Trentino and South Tyrol regions of Northern Italy, and North Tyrol (Austria) in two distinct alphabets: the alphabet of Sanzeno, and the alphabet of Magrè (near Schio). It was used to write the Rhaetic language.^[13][14][15]

Venetic alphabet

Alphabet of Este: Similar but not identical to that of Magrè,

Inscribed

21 of the 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted for

The South Picene alphabet, known from the 6th century BC, is most like the southern Etruscan alphabet in that it uses Q for /k/ and K for /g/. ⟨.⟩ is a reduced ⟨o⟩ and ⟨:⟩ is a reduced ⟨8⟩, used for /f/.^[18]

Unicode

The Old Italic alphabets were unified and added to the Unicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1. The Unicode block for Old Italic is U+10300–U+1032F without specification of a particular alphabet (i.e. the Old Italic alphabets are considered equivalent, and the font used will determine the variant).^[19]

Writing direction (right-to-left, left-to-right, or boustrophedon) varies based on the language and even the time period. For simplicity most scholars use left-to-right and this is the Unicode default direction for the Old Italic block. For this reason, the glyphs in the code chart are shown with left-to-right orientation.^[20]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Old Italic script.

• Euboean alphabet
• Alphabets of Asia Minor
• Linear A
• Linear B
• Old European script
• Trojan script

References